Marlo Thomas On Difficulty Of Being ‘That Girl’ In 1960s TV Biz: TCA

Today’s TCA panel on PBS’ documentary Makers: Women Who Make America, which traces the last 50 years of the women’s movement and premieres February 26, featured some powerhouse players in the fight for equality: Gloria Steinem and Marlo Thomas among them. Both made strong statements about the state of feminism in America in 2013. But one of more telling stories recounted on the panel was not about politics, but rather Thomas’ recounting the struggles behind her 1966-71 TV series That Girl. At age 24, Thomas became both producer and star in the comedy about a spunky single girl and aspiring actress taking on New York City.

At the time she was pitching the series, Thomas had read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and said that after college “I was a bridesmaid 17 times” and didn’t want to get married. She said that every TV script she was reading was all the same: “the women were wives, daughters and secretaries.” She took her idea to NBC programming executive Edgar Scherick, demanding: “Ever thought of doing a show where the woman is somebody?” She said Scherick responded as though “I had been speaking Swahili.” She gave him a copy of Feminine Mystique. His reaction: “I just have one question: Is this going to happen to my wife?”

Thomas said she ran into massive pushback from writers, editors and network personnel who didn’t want to take orders from a “girl.” “We worked at Desilu [Studios], and Lucille Ball was on the lot,” Thomas said. “The joke around the lot was if you couldn’t find me, I was probably in the men’s room having a meeting with Lucy.”

The story was funny, but the effect was harmful to Thomas career, she said. And hers wasn’t the only such story that told during the session. Thomas and Steinem were joined on the panel by executive producers Betsy West and Dyllan McGee; filmmaker (and only male panelist) Barak Goodman; Aileen Hernandez of the National Organization for Women; and Barbara Burns, one of the first women coal miners.

Burns told the story of having male coal miners harassing her by plastering her walls with photos of nude males from Playgirl magazine. She chose to defuse the attack with humor by asking that the men replace the photos with new ones every month when the magazine came out. The men, she said, never pulled the stunt again.

Recent Comments

I seem to remember hearing accounts of Marlo Thomas being an absolute nightmare on That Girl. Whatever,...

Shirley Ugest

2 years

I was very young at the time but remember That Girl as quite the opposite of Marlo's...

Jack Brooks

2 years

Marlo Thomas' career disappeared because she was never especially talented, and Steinem is a hypocrite who traded...

On a more serious note, Steinem expressed fears that the women’s movement is in danger of heading backward at the hand of the right wing that she believes controls the Republican Party. “I think a lot of them have read The Handmaid’s Tale and are doing it over,” she said, referring to Margaret Atwood’s near-future novel about a young woman put into sexual slavery by a totalitarian Christian theocracy. Steinem added that women would always be unequal in the workplace if there is not an equal division of childcare between men and women. If not, she said, both men and women will continue to associate “female authority with childhood” and not be able to accept women as leaders.

All the panelists agreed the goal of the project is to debunk myths about the goals of the women’s movement and lay the groundwork for moving forward. The docu is the culmination of a partnership between PBS and AOL; some 100 interviews with women have been put online.

8 Comments

Ya’ know, I was around back then, enjoyed the show for the most part, unsuspecting that MT’s intent was not liberating women to make their own decisions, but a RULE/CODA for how ALL women must live. Load of hogwash, freeing females from their actual NATURAL function of reproductivity. Like with the race and homosexual agendas, it’s not about opening up decisions outside societal norms, but DOMINANCE of their nomenclature.

But you know what’s even funnier? I’m not sure if it’s Thomas’ horrendous craving to desperately look young and beautiful, mocking the Women’s Movement in general, or how as women, homosexuals and non-white partiaan’s become the mirror image of the intolerant society they claimed to attack….. So tell me, which is funnier?

Sparky • on Jan 15, 2013 3:51 pm

Uh….again, but perhaps this time in English, and with a point?

Casey • on Jan 15, 2013 3:51 pm

Only people from Glenn-Beckistan speak your language.
And anytime someone blames “women, homosexuals and non-whites” for anything the rest of us know exactly what the racist, misogynist, intolerant ass-for-brains really means.

Malibo Jackk • on Jan 15, 2013 3:51 pm

Love the Thomas story.
Hard to believe that people would argue with success.
But they do.

jerri blank • on Jan 15, 2013 3:51 pm

I grok what you’re saying. I actually DO appreciate hearing the rational behind a point of view diametrically opposed to my perception of the world. But your post is an MFA in cuckoo-bananas.

Jack Brooks • on Jan 15, 2013 3:51 pm

Marlo Thomas’ career disappeared because she was never especially talented, and Steinem is a hypocrite who traded on her good looks. The Feminism movement pretended to be about equal-pay-for-equal-work (which no fair-minded person opposed) but later it came out of the closet as the “Let’s Hate Men & Motherhood Movement”, so to speak, which turned off subsequent female generations who didn’t hate their dads, brothers, or the idea of becoming moms one days.

Shirley Ugest • on Jan 15, 2013 3:51 pm

I was very young at the time but remember That Girl as quite the opposite of Marlo’s feminist pioneering rear-view vision. It seemed to me that her character was entirely too girly. Didn’t Thomas’ father Danny have an influence in starting her tv career? He was a very big star and one might assume he made a few phone calls on her behalf.